Marketers and designers risk overlooking how they should be inclusive with their audience in an increasingly exclusive world.
This is where accessibility marketing comes into (top of mind) play.
True inclusive accessibility is about designing experiences that meet all of your consumers, with all of their needs, wherever they are in your customer experience journey – including people with disabilities that may impair how content can be consumed.
And if you’re not designing your content around all people with all abilities or disabilities, you are truly missing out on connecting with your consumers.
What is Accessibility Marketing and Design?
Around 15% of the total global population is working with a disability, and for businesses worldwide, it would certainly be poor practice to disclude 15% of your consumers.
Which makes accessibility marketing a no-brainer.
Accessible marketing uses inclusive design practices that meet the needs of all users, with all abilities, to experience the brand across all touchpoints fully. In marketing, these experiences come into play across:
- Websites
- Email marketing
- Social media
- And in-person
Accessibility marketing identifies the unique needs and preferences of all people with a range of abilities in order to direct their advertising, communication, marketing collateral, packaging, and brand website. Accessibility means truly meeting the needs of people with various permanent, temporary, and circumstantial disabilities, including impairments in mobility, vision, hearing, speech, and cognition.
The goal is to ultimately increase accessibility, and to normalize accessibility marketing as a standard part of all businesses and marketing practices, encouraging businesses to design their strategies, branding, and products with accessibility in mind.
Benefits of Accessibility Marketing and Design
Inclusive design helps brands hold space for people of all abilities to experience your brand. It is a foundational strategy that makes products, services, and communication accessible anywhere, anytime, to anyone.
Beyond the draw of creating meaningful connections with your audience, accessibility marketing has several undeniable benefits:
1. Increased Reach: By making products and services accessible, businesses can tap into the significant market segment of people with disabilities, estimated to be more than 1.3 billion people worldwide.
2. Customer Loyalty: By demonstrating a commitment to accessibility, businesses can earn the loyalty of customers with disabilities and their families, who rely on accessibility to have seamless customer experiences day-to-day.
3. Brand Reputation: Businesses prioritizing accessibility can enhance their reputation as socially responsible and inclusive while strengthening customer relationships. A strong reputation as a brand with integrity and inclusivity can help to improve brand image and customer attraction.
4. Regulatory Compliance: Most countries have laws that require businesses to provide accessible products and services, and accessibility marketing helps companies to ensure that they build that compliance right into their marketing.
5. Innovation: By focusing on accessibility, businesses can drive innovation and create new products and services with accessibility at their core, fundamentally meeting the needs of all customers with every touchpoint of design.
Accessibility with Alt-Text
Alt text, aka alternative text or alternative attributes, is a brief but detailed description of an image that appears when the image cannot be displayed.
Alt text plays a crucial role in accessibility for people with visual impairments or using screen readers to understand what is displayed with the image. Alt text should be descriptive, concise, and relevant to the image. Think social media, websites, TV shows, and the rest.
Here are StellaPop’s five key tips for writing clear, concise, descriptive, and inclusive alt-text:
1. Be Descriptive:
Alt text should provide a clear and concise description of the image. Describe the most important aspects of the image, including its content, context, and function. Use detail and descriptive words; for example, instead of saying ‘pancakes’, say ‘three fluffy pancakes dripping with maple syrup’.
2. Keep it Short:
While it’s important to be descriptive, it’s also important to keep alt text short and to the point. Aim for 125 characters or less.
3. Avoid Repetition:
Don’t repeat information already included in the image caption or surrounding text. Alt text should provide additional context, not repeat what’s already been said.
4. Be Specific:
Avoid vague descriptions such as “image” or “picture.” Instead, use specific and descriptive language that accurately describes the image’s content.
5. Test and Revise:
After writing alt text, test it using a screen reader to ensure it accurately describes the image. Revise as necessary to ensure that it provides a clear and accurate description.
Here is a great example of how to build alt text into your images:
- Okay alt text: <img src=”bird.png” alt=”Rooster”>
- Better alt text: <img src=”bird.png” alt=”Rooster crowing”>
- Best alt text: <img src=”bird.png” alt=”Red-crested rooster crowing”>
Improve SEO with Accessibility
Overall, building accessibility into your marketing can improve your customer relationships, your product innovation, and, believe it or not, your SEO performance.
Here are a few SEO-focused reasons to build accessibility marketing into the core of your strategy:
Improved User Experience:
By making websites more accessible, businesses can improve the user experience for all individuals, including those with disabilities. This can lead to increased engagement, longer dwell times, and decreased bounce rates, which can signal to search engines that a website is of high quality and relevant, leading to better rankings.
Targeting Niche Keywords:
By focusing on accessibility keywords and phrases, businesses can target a unique and often underserved niche market. This can lead to increased traffic, higher conversion rates, and improved search rankings, as search engines reward websites that cater to specific user needs.
Compliance with WCAG & ADA Guidelines:
Implementing accessibility features in accordance with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA can improve the website design, structure, content readability, and user navigation, all of which can improve search engine rankings.
How can your business embrace accessibility, innovation, and improved customer relationships? StellaPop can help you make a plan!
